Brush and ink. Curves across the paper. Culture renewed. Brush caressing rice paper. In Chinese high culture, calligraphy is a form of art.

A besunglassed Luo Ta-you rasping that “Taipei is not my home”; Wu Bai proclaiming that “you are my flower” while doing the Robot; Mayday taking flight with “Eloping to the Moon”; the warm tones of Soda-green’s “Little Love Song”; the “100 Ways to Live” of Crowd Lu.... Over the years, several such “underground” acts in Taiwan have leapt into the mainstream limelight, setting new standards for independent music on the island.

The latest word on Taiwan’s film industry is, “We’re rolling!”

Among eight local films released for Chinese New Year’s, Din Tao: Leader of the Parade, a low-budget production that cost under NT$40 million to shoot, has turned out to be a smash hit at the box office, with earnings already surpassing NT$300 million.

Anyone who has spent some time in Taipei knows how it feels to be walking down a narrow side street and see, under a canopy of verdant old trees, a black-tiled roof and wood-frame windows—usually silent and mysterious. These are oases of green in the concrete desert, yet these venerable structures, which have witnessed many a dramatic historical twist and turn, are today usually hidden behind high walls, decaying and collapsing in slow motion.

As the biggest-ever local production, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is a landmark for Taiwan’s movie industry.

Published just two months ago and many years after the author’s last collection, Walis Nokan’s Couplets the World Has Left Behind has already required a second printing.

The year 2011 was dominated by crises both at home and abroad.

Everywhere you look, people clutch hot cups of coffee as they scurry off to work.

“If I’m not in a caf'e, then I’m on my way to one.” So said Austrian poet Peter Altenberg, and his words echo deep in the heart of contemporary Taiwanese culture.

Giddens Ko is Taiwan’s best-selling author—and that’s no exaggeration! For five straight years, his books stood at the top of bestseller lists year in and year out.

Virtually everyone in the Chinese-speaking world owns at least one chop, whether made of wood, horn, ivory, crystal, amber, or jade. But to chop collectors the only worthwhile chops are those made from soft stones.

It was a closed and somber era when Zhang Qingji, a pedicab driver and book lover, opened a second-hand bookstore in Taipei.

Animated movies from the US and Japan like The Lion King, Toy Story, One Piece, and Sponge-Bob Square-Pants, have pretty much monopolized the imaginations of Chinese kids from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Though Taiwan once took more outsourced Hollywood animation work than anywhere else in the world, it has only produced a handful of animated films of its own over the last few decades.